


Timestamp: ABY 23-8-27

by lucymonster



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: C-3PO/C-3PO is the real endgame here, Droid POV, F/M, Gen, Kylo Ren Redemption, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-18
Updated: 2019-06-18
Packaged: 2020-04-23 21:21:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19159228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucymonster/pseuds/lucymonster
Summary: The war against the First Order rages on. Desperate for any advantage that might turn the tide of bloodshed, Rey discovers an ancient Jedi artifact with the power to open a portal through time. The journey is a dangerous one. It might not even work. She's staking the survival of the whole Resistance on her last slim shred of hope that something inside Kylo Ren could still be worth saving.Luckily, she has a trusty protocol droid to help her on her mission.





	Timestamp: ABY 23-8-27

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ambiguously](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambiguously/gifts).



The modified shuttle violates at least fourteen galactic standard flight-readiness laws. It hasn’t been registered with the appropriate authorities or undergone any of the mandatory safety tests for flight on Republic-controlled hyperways. C-3PO comforts himself: with the Republic toppled and the First Order now controlling all of civilised space, flight-readiness law enforcement is low, so they’re unlikely to ever receive the fines they so manifestly deserve.

‘Watch your language, R2-D2,’ he retorts as he ascends the makeshift boarding ramp. He’s well aware of R2-D2’s general disdain for mechanical safety regulations, which is one of many reasons it’s lucky the droid has found himself working for an underground paramilitary force instead of a naval organisation or respectable civilian flight garage. ‘You may scoff now, but you’ll be sorry if your shoddy workmanship gets me and Miss Rey killed on our journey. I _don’t_ like the way you’ve bypassed that acceleration limiter. Surely the makers put it there for a reason.’

R2-D2 advises C-3PO that his input on the acceleration limiter is quite unneeded. Of course, he doesn’t say it in exactly those words.

Down on the landing floor, Miss Rey is hugging Master Finn tightly.

‘I’ll be right back,’ she says, and C-3PO’s finely tuned audio sensors pick up the words despite their low and slightly quavery pitch. ‘If it works, it’ll barely take a second of your time.’

‘I still don’t understand why you have to do this.’

‘His past is his greatest weakness, Finn. He all but told me so himself. He wants it dead, so we need it alive. If I can find out exactly what made him turn–’

‘Can’t you just read his mind?’

Miss Rey laughs, though to C-3PO’s sensors she sounds distinctly unamused. ‘I wish it worked that way. Trust me, Kylo Ren’s mind isn’t the safest place for me to be right now. But I know this is going to work. The Force led me to this artifact – it wants me to use it.’

‘Just take care of yourself.’

‘I always do.’ Miss Rey breaks the hug. Master Finn looks as though he wants to hold on.

‘Primed for launch,’ shouts one of the human mechs who’s been tinkering with their shuttle’s engines. ‘Everyone stand clear.’

Miss Rey boards hastily, and C-3PO takes the liberty of fastening her in-flight safety belt for her while she’s busy gazing back out at Master Finn. C-3PO’s own seat is up the front, in what would be the pilot’s seat of a standard craft, altered with a suite of electrodes and connector jacks attached to the headrest. There are no spatial coordinates for today’s destination. Miss Rey’s mysterious Force artifact has opened the portal; now the ship’s navigational array, with the help of C-3PO’s extensive temporal memory banks, will take them through it and deliver them where they need to go.

As the engines fire up, they emit a subsonic roar that makes the shuttle walls shake ominously. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever gone travelling through time before,’ C-3PO calls back to Miss Rey. ‘It’s not outside the realm of possibility, as I’m told I had quite the storied career before my old masters wiped my memory. In any case, this is going to be quite the–’

‘Threepio,’ Miss Rey interrupts. His sophisticated emotional interpretation subroutines detect deep anxiety in her voice, so he decides not to remark upon the rudeness. ‘You need to concentrate on where we’re going.’

Of course. As the engine’s roar intensifies, C-3PO shuts off all input from his audio sensors and photoreceptors to focus on what’s archived in his memory bank. The navigational array accepts the data transfer at once, latching on with a vigour that not one of C-3PO’s 7,200,181 dictionaries contains quite the right word to describe. Those languages were largely invented by organics, not droids, and none of them seem ever to have needed to convey what it feels like when an overclocked ship’s AI attempts to download your entire brain in a single moment’s transfer.

It isn’t pleasant. But C-3PO is one of only two droids in the entire galaxy capable of supplying this particular data, and the mission’s exquisite interpersonal sensitivity has made him the obvious choice for the job. As the ship rattles his circuits impatiently, he reaches deep inside his archive and pulls out the record they need: a stately homestead in the verdant outer suburbs of Hanna City, Chandrila, timestamped Taungsday 27 on the eighth month of ABY 23.

The rattling increases to circuit-frying speed, and then all at once it stops. When C-3PO reengages his sensory systems and un-shutters his photoreceptors, he finds the homestead image in his memory has come into being outside the shuttle’s viewport. On cursory assessment, the first stage of their mission would appear to have succeeded.

On second assessment, C-3PO’s sensors also detect that the engine is on fire.

He _knew_ R2-D2 should have left that acceleration limiter alone.

Miss Rey is dismantling the exit hatch’s auto-locking function, and a familiar human figure is rushing across the lawn towards them. ‘Han Solo!’ C-3PO greets him as the hatch finally wrenches open amid a screeching of hinges and a billowing of smoke. ‘It is I, C-3PO. You probably don’t recognise me because of the–’

‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’ Han Solo barks. ‘This is private property you’ve landed on, and right on top of my wife’s hydrangeas, too. I hope you assholes are insured, because you’re about to – wait, Threepio?’

There are tears brimming visibly in Miss Rey’s eyes, no doubt from smoke exposure. This isn’t the entrance C-3PO pictured for them on their probably-first-ever journey through the reaches of time. Oh, when they get back, he’s going to have some _choice_ words for R2-D2.

* * *

The house is exactly how he remembered it, and the company is pleasant. While the humans hash out their petty organic-minded arguments – whether Miss Rey really exists, whether she knows Han Solo and Princess Leia in the future, whether time travel is even possible or whether this is all some hoax to damage Senator Organa’s public image – C-3PO takes to the kitchen and settles his nerves with the far more civilised conversation that two protocol droids are capable of enjoying together.

‘Evil?’ says C-3PO’s past self as he sets up the tea-tray for the humans. ‘I don’t like the sound of that. My Princess will be devastated.’

‘Quite evil, I’m afraid,’ says C-3PO ruefully. ‘But you mustn’t tell the Princess – or anyone. If Master Ben finds reason to think Miss Rey and I distrust him, he’ll likely go into a sulk and refuse to tell us anything. You know how he gets.’

‘I certainly do,’ says the other C-3PO. And then, as he tops up the sugar bowl: ‘Have you considered asking him _not_ to become evil? Now that your intelligence has alerted us to his future plans, perhaps we can dissuade him.’

‘An excellent idea,’ says C-3PO. He would have expected no less from himself. ‘And we certainly intend to try it, for your sake. But it won’t benefit the future that Miss Rey and I must go back to. None of our calculations suggest it should be possible to change the past. Quite the contrary – from the moment we set foot in it, this timeline of yours became a sort of parallel reality. Nothing we do here will erase the existence of our version of Master Ben who never benefited from our intervention.’

‘How inconvenient,’ says the other C-3PO. ‘Oh, well, I suppose we shall have to make do. At least _I’ll_ be spared your other Master Ben’s antics.’

In the drawing room, Miss Rey seems to have at last impressed Han Solo and Princess Leia with the veracity of her existence. ‘Don’t see what my teenage son has to do with the end of the world,’ the Princess is saying, with what C-3PO is quite sure she doesn’t intend to be irony. ‘Anyway, he’s at his track meet right now, and he won’t be home for at least another hour.’

‘Track meet?’ Miss Rey furrows her brows. ‘He does athletics?’

Han Solo snorts ungraciously. ‘Yeah, wouldn’t that just be lovely for our bank accounts? Track meet as in race track, kid. He’s busy collecting hover miles and hell only knows what kind of collision damage on that state-of-the-art racing speeder he swore up and down he was going to take good care of. You know, when I was his age, if you wanted a new vehicle then you stole one from the scrappers fair and square. You didn’t come to your parents expecting a handout.’

‘I’d rather pay for a proper speeder than have him risk his neck in some salvaged old rust bucket,’ Princess Leia says.

‘I just don’t see how it helps his flying skills, having all those extra bells and whistles. A really good pilot can make anything stay airborne. That speeder’s an advantage he never had to work to earn, and if he ever expects to fly professionally–’

‘He can’t fly professionally,’ says Princess Leia. ‘And earned advantages are a bit beside the point for Ben, aren’t they?’

Miss Rey blinks between them. C-3PO can’t blame her for the confusion – he knows this argument by rote, but it must seem obscure to someone outside the Solo-Organa household. The Princess says Master Ben’s Force powers are unfair on the other young pilots he races, and he ought to steer clear of the professional circuit for honour’s sake. Han Solo says Master Ben’s hovercraft expenses are unfair on the parents who pay his allowance, and he ought to earn his keep with a few pro races and stop mucking about at amateur meets. Master Ben says they shouldn’t have had children if they didn’t want to support him, and he generally says it so loudly and belligerently that they’re forced to stop fighting and join forces in banishing him to his room.

‘What my Princess means to say,’ the other C-3PO puts in tactfully, just as C-3PO is activating his vocabulator to say the very same thing, ‘is that Master Ben will be home around suppertime, but you won’t be able to speak to him before then.’ He glances out the drawing room window and adds, ‘Also, your shuttle appears to be issuing a lot of smoke.’

‘I thought I put that fire out already,’ says Miss Rey.

Han Solo waves away the teacup C-3PO just poured for him. ‘Okay, kid, you and I had better go get that hood open before you set fire to my entire lawn. I don’t know about this time travel mumbo-jumbo, but I know a thing or two about modified engines.’

‘Trust me, I know you do,’ says Miss Rey. ‘I already told you – I’ve flown the Falcon.’

‘And what did you think of her?’

Their voices trail off down the hallway as Miss Rey waxes loquacious about the Millennium Falcon’s many ill-advised machinery upgrades. There’s a tight, hoarse note to her voice and a watery look in her eyes, and C-3PO has some lingering concerns about how much smoke she must have inhaled during their landing. But he isn’t a med droid, and even if he wanted to stop her, she’s the only one who can explain to Han Solo what she and R2-D2 have done to the shuttle to make it capable of flying through time. If they don’t get its engines fixed, they risk being trapped in this timeline for good.

‘What do you make of it, Threepio?’ Princess Leia asks, watching them go.

‘I think–’

‘This other C-3PO certainly shares all my programming and technical specifications,’ says the other C-3PO, and C-3PO realises the Princess wasn’t asking him. This is going to be quite confusing. ‘We were also able to confirm through a port-to-port neural connection that the two of us share identical memory files dating all the way back to my last wipe.’

‘Well,’ says Princess Leia, ‘that’s very interesting. By the looks of that shuttle, our new friends will at least be staying the night. How about the two of you give me some thinking space and go pour yourselves an oil bath?’

‘An excellent idea, Princess,’ say the two C-3POs in unison.

* * *

For the most part, C-3PO’s systems adapt well to the shift in time. His internal chronometer re-tunes itself to the local frequency, and his memory retrieval subroutines effortlessly furnish him with all the data from the relevant period. But seeing Han Solo alive is strange, and seeing Master Ben is strange as well – Master Ben who, as far as C-3PO’s memory filing system is concerned, has also been dead for a number of years, and his records transferred to a backup drive to make storage space for his renamed and significantly reconfigured body double.

This version of Master Ben has only recently crossed Chandrila’s legal milestone for human adulthood. At eighteen years old, he has gangly limbs and a certain boyish roundness to his cheeks, which are framed by jaw-length hair that he refuses to let his mother trim. He’s dressed in his race club jersey, emblazoned with a crest on the front and SOLO across the back, and he’s filling up his tall, thin frame with such vast quantities of supper that C-3PO, try as he might, can’t calculate it to be consistent with the standard volume of a human stomach. He’s aware this is a common adolescent trait. Miss Rey is a little older than this Master Ben, but her dining habits are markedly similar.

She has soot marks and grease from her wrists to her elbows, and his hair and clothes are rumpled from several hours of intermittent G-force exposure. The two of them keep taking it in turns to steal glances at each other across the table. Invigorated by his oil bath, C-3PO’s highly advanced emotional intelligence programming allows him to see past their subterfuge and recognise the early signs of shared attraction. He may need to alert Han Solo and Princess Leia to it later, as it’s quite possible the situation has escaped their notice. There is, and always has been, a certain tendency for miscommunication between young Master Ben and his parents.

‘So, Uncle Luke was the one who sent you?’ Master Ben asks Miss Rey, once he’s mostly done chewing his mouthful of roasted nerf loin.

‘No, I sent myself,’ says Miss Rey. ‘But I knew – I mean, I know Luke. He’s a mentor of mine in the future. He taught me the ways of the Force.’

‘And those ways include time travel. He never mentioned that when he was giving me the Jedi sales pitch.’

‘To be honest,’ says Miss Rey, ‘I’m not sure he knows about it. This technique is one I figured out by myself.’ Encouraged, perhaps, by Master Ben’s example, she also takes a bite of nerf loin and talks her way through its maceration. ‘They said you’re leaving for Luke’s school soon. Do you actually want to go?’

Master Ben chews thoughtfully. ‘My mom says becoming a Jedi is the only way forward for me,’ he says. ‘There’s no point having any other skills – it’s cheating, apparently. Because my being strong in the Force isn’t fair to all the morons who can’t tap into the power that’s all around them.’

‘They’re not morons,’ Miss Rey says, a little coolly to C-3PO’s ear. He has long suspected that Master Ben’s propensity for name-calling exceeds the usual parameters of adolescent pique, and is one of the reasons he has always struggled to make friends. ‘But Leia’s not right to call it cheating, either. It’s the same for me – the Force shows me answers, and I can’t pretend not to see them any more than I can go around bouncing off walls and pretending my eyes don’t work.’

‘Right,’ says Master Ben with zeal. ‘It’s not like I ever asked to be a Jedi. I can’t help that I was born with these powers. But if learning from Uncle Luke will help me deal with–’

He breaks off.

‘Help you deal with what?’

‘Well, you know,’ says Master Ben, though C-3PO suspects he was going to say something else. ‘If I’ve got it, I might as well learn to use it properly, right? It makes sense.’

He spears a roast potato on his fork. Then he looks at Miss Rey’s grubby arms and says, ‘Did you even wash your hands before dinner?’

C-3PO also has his theories about why Master Ben has never had much luck with girls.

* * *

Later, once the family has gone to bed, C-3PO checks in on Miss Rey in the guest bedroom he and the other C-3PO made up for her. It’s been all too easy to slot back into life in this home. He even has memories still on file for where the good guest linens are stored.

‘I don’t know how long we’re going to be here,’ she tells him. ‘Our landing blew the shuttle’s main fuel line – which is good, I guess, if it gives us an excuse to stay. Han’s offered to take me in for new parts tomorrow, but if they don’t have what we need in stock then we could be waiting weeks for delivery.’ Her hands clench into tight round balls. ‘It won’t matter, right, Threepio? However long we spend here, we’ll be able to arrive back at the same moment we left.’

‘I’m afraid it’s not my area of expertise,’ says C-3PO. ‘For that, we should have brought R2-D2, though I shudder to think what kind of mess he’d make of our mission’s social aspect. Tact isn’t really part of his programming, you know. It wouldn’t do to have him blurt out every unseemly detail of the future we’ve come from.’

As agreed before they left, Miss Rey’s story about future events is a watered-down and carefully curated version of the truth. She’s talked about the galactic cold war and the First Order’s shocking rise to power, but she’s left out Han Solo’s death and the entire character of Kylo Ren. Master Ben is at a fragile age, C-3PO remembers well from the last time he lived through this period. Setting aside the distress it would cause his parents, there’s simply no knowing how he might react to the truth about his role in the conflict.

‘He’s going to need to find out sooner or later,’ says Miss Rey. ‘But I agree – we have to take it slow. I’ll need to build more of a connection with him first, if I want him to open up about whatever poison Snoke’s been drip-feeding him.’

‘It looks to me like your connection is coming on quite nicely,’ C-3PO almost says. But he keeps it to himself, in the end, as his vast database of common human social cues suggests that Miss Rey might consider the topic a sensitive one.

* * *

The auto shop turns out not to carry the parts they need to patch their custom time shuttle. Their order will need to come directly from Kuat – and it’s convenient, really, that the damage should have happened on this end of the timeline, because right now Kuat is a flourishing free-market trade port and hub of shipyard innovation, whereas in the future it is a heavily guarded First Order stronghold devoted to building machines of war.

C-3PO is quietly pleased with their extended stay in ABY 23. While Miss Rey works on connecting with Master Ben and repairing the shuttle, he makes the most of his free time by helping the other C-3PO get some of the work done about the place that he’s always struggled with alone. He sets up a custom switchboard to courteously filter out Princess Leia’s senatorial business from the rest of the household’s correspondence. He mends a broken entertainment computer, cleans a store of corrupted old holos from the early post-war days, and even tidies Master Ben’s room for him – a task that stretches his diplomatic capacity to its absolute limit.

‘No, I need those,’ Master Ben snaps at him as he attempts to relocate a tottering pile of archaic paper notebooks to a more appropriate storage venue, such as the trash.

‘Master Ben, if you dislike your current datapad, I’m sure your parents would be more than happy to furnish you with a new one.’

‘I like writing by hand, okay? Leave it.’

‘Very well. Then perhaps I can transfer these engine parts out to the garage, to make more space for your notebook collection?’

‘No, I need those too.’

At least he doesn’t object when C-3PO presumes to empty his laundry hamper.

A recent mishap during a Resistance escape drill caused some damage to C-3PO’s olfactory sensors, so he can’t tell if the room still has that slightly musty teenage odour he remembers from his last pass through this timeline. It should probably have more or less evaporated by now. Master Ben is nearly finished growing – all that’s left is to gain the rest of his muscle mass and obtain some scars, and then he’ll be a perfect match for the sinister alter-ego who has replaced him in C-3PO’s future. The thought is an unpleasant one. For the sake of tidy internal record-keeping, C-3PO prefers to think of Kylo Ren as a full factory rebuild, whatever the organic equivalent is for when the makers recycle a chassis but reprogram it with new functions and personality subroutines. It’s easier on his circuits to store Kylo Ren and Master Ben under separate files. But it introduces all manner of processing glitches when a single visual record maps so closely to two discrete identity profiles at once.

‘Hey, Threepio,’ says Master Ben. He’s lying on his stomach on the bed, head propped on his arms as he watches C-3PO’s progress without offering to help. ‘How do Rey and I know each other in the future? Does she … I mean, are we close?’

‘Goodness, no, I should hope not.’ Upon seeing how Master Ben’s expression changes, C-3PO hastily adds: ‘Of course, in our future, no one has much time to be close to anyone at all. But Miss Rey certainly wishes it were different. Why, she went as far as inventing time travel so that she could come back here and stop your–’

‘Stop my what?’

A neat trap. C-3PO catches himself in the nick of time, and notes with mild concern that Master Ben clearly hasn’t accepted their finessed account of the future as readily as they’d hoped. ‘Oh, dear,’ he says, tactfully changing the subject. ‘When was the last time you swept under your bed? If you’re going to insist on keeping all this paper around, you really must be mindful of how much dust it attracts.’

‘What aren’t you telling me, Threepio?’

‘Nothing you have any business knowing, I assure you. Gracious me, where is that mouse droid when you need it? I must sweep this up at once, or else you’ll get dust mites.’

Master Ben’s brows draw tight, in a combination of displeasure and intense concentration that C-3PO knows all too well.

‘That trick won’t work on me, Master Ben. And I advise you not to attempt it on Miss Rey. She’s a very powerful Jedi, you know, and more than capable of countering any mind probe you might throw at her.’

Master Ben huffs an impatient sigh. It’s hard to be sure, but C-3PO has a feeling that this might not be the end of the matter.

* * *

On Benduday, after two days of tactful information-gathering and groundwork-laying in ABY 23, C-3PO deems it safe to share with the other C-3PO about the droid intelligence network he has set up for Princess Leia’s Resistance.

‘I’ve always thought my capacity for subterfuge could be put to greater strategic use,’ says the other C-3PO.

‘I know you have,’ says C-3PO. Outside the window, Master Ben has volunteered to help Miss Rey on the shuttle. A great deal of talk is happening, but not a lot of visible engine repairs. ‘And you’re quite right. Without my – that is to say, without _our_ – help, the Resistance would be in operating in the dark. Between you and me, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that our contribution is the lynchpin holding the war effort together.’

Across the weekend, the other C-3PO lets C-3PO know that Princess Leia and Han Solo have conferred in private and agreed to postpone or cancel all out-of-home business while their guests from the future are with them. It’s courteous of them. Between Han Solo’s long journeys and Princess Leia’s demanding senatorial schedule, it’s rare to have everyone at home all at once. In preparing for this trip, C-3PO had to scan his memories quite thoroughly to find an arrival point for him and Miss Rey when all three persons of interest would be available.

‘We shall have to plan some nice family dinners,’ he says, and the other C-3PO agrees.

On the following Primeday, while Master Ben and Miss Rey have gone off together and the other C-3PO is helping Han Solo in the garage, C-3PO sits with the Princess in her home office and tactfully answers or deflects her probing questions as appropriate.

‘I already know the First Order is a threat,’ she says. ‘I keep telling the Senate every chance I get, but none of them want to hear it.’

‘Unfortunately,’ says C-3PO, ‘they will continue not to want to hear it right up until…’ With his vocabulator poised around the terrible calamity on Hosnian Prime, C-3PO pulls himself to a halt. ‘Until things become very inconvenient indeed,’ he salvages. And because he does it so skillfully, Princess Leia doesn’t even notice his near mistake.

If he’s honest with himself – and of course he must be, as he is programmed to the highest possible standards of ethical conduct and integrity – C-3PO feels no great urgency to complete this mission and return to the future. It’s been so long since he last saw his Princess happy and relaxed like this, so long since he experienced the simple pleasure of a nightly oil bath or watched Han Solo clap Master Ben on the shoulder as they greet each other at the breakfast table. He knows that by the strictest rules of temporal continuity, this point in time doesn’t belong to him. His proper place is back where he came from, and sooner or later he shall have to go there.

Still, he’s glad not to have to go just yet. He wouldn’t dream of being rude enough to tell her so, but Miss Rey’s plan strikes C-3PO as a little on the weak side. Convincing Master Ben to stay good in this timeline won’t help them in their own, and learning about his motives for becoming evil won’t change the fact that the future Kylo Ren has comprehensively succeeded at it. Singularly unpleasant individual that he is, C-3PO feels quite sure Miss Rey is wasting her time looking for new ways to reach him.

If they’re doomed to failure, they might as well at least make the most of their short reprieve inside a happier past.

But on Centaxday, calamity strikes: C-3PO burns the elaborate pudding he planned as dessert for their family dinner, and while he’s busy trying to save as much of the sauce as he can, the other C-3PO accidentally lets slip to Han Solo that his son in the future they come from has murdered him. It’s no good – the sauce is as burnt as everything else, sticking charred and bitter to the bottom of the pan – and dinner as a result is an awkward, strained affair with very little conversation. Han Solo excuses himself from the table early. Princess Leia follows him shortly after.

‘They’re always like this,’ Master Ben says, insensitive to both the cause of his father’s discomfort and the spoilt taste of his dinner. ‘Can’t bear to sit in one room as a family for more than five minutes.’

Zhellday is taken up mostly by hushed conversations between Princess Leia and Han Solo that neither of the C-3POs is party to. C-3PO himself is appalled with his past self’s uncharacteristic lack of discretion, but Miss Rey very kindly assures him his apologies aren’t needed.

‘I think I’m getting somewhere,’ she says. ‘Ben’s been talking to me a lot – he hasn’t said Snoke’s name, but he’s been dropping heavy hints about someone talking to him through the Force and urging him to embrace his worst impulses. He’s scared, C-3PO, really scared. He doesn’t want the darkness to win. He’s resisting it as hard as he can. If I can just find out what he needs that the light isn’t giving him...’

On Zhellday evening, C-3PO witnesses Miss Rey and Master Ben kissing. No, more than kissing: his hands are up her tunic and her hands are down his trousers, and C-3PO's audio sensors are flooded with gasping, grunting sounds that would put a bantha bull to shame.

The new approach may or may not succeed at anchoring Master Ben to the light, but C-3PO decides not to intervene. Perhaps his chaperone protocol circuits have degraded from disuse, or perhaps his etiquette overrides determine that interrupting at such a time would cause unnecessary embarrassment for all involved. But Princess Leia and Han Solo have enough on their minds already, and C-3PO is gripped with the illogical but absolute sense that, one way or another, their adventure is approaching its inevitable denouement.

* * *

C-3PO is helping Han Solo replant Princess Leia’s ruined hydrangeas when the garden bed once again falls victim to the heat and roaring thruster output of a shuttle coming down to land.

Han Solo yanks C-3PO backwards with an arm around his power socket. By the time he has finished recalibrating his balance gyro, the shuttle’s airlock is open and a horribly familiar figure is striding down the boarding ramp.

Kylo Ren.

They’re done for.

C-3PO should have known better than to think his present comfort in this timeline could last.

Kylo Ren has come without his mask or hood, and C-3PO stares aghast at the familiar face of Master Ben distorted by rage and marred by the deep scar across his eye.

‘Where is she?’ Kylo Ren demands.

‘Ben,’ says Han Solo in a choked voice. C-3PO worries that he may have inhaled too many of the shuttle’s fumes. He looks on the brink of a medical emergency.

The two men stare at each other for a very long time. Long enough that by all rights C-3PO could do something, but all the charge seems to have left his motivator and he finds his legs are frozen to the spot.

‘I didn’t come for you,’ says Kylo Ren at last. His voice sounds strained too, but C-3PO is a great deal less concerned for his welfare than Han Solo’s. ‘Tell me where to find the girl and I’ll have no reason to hurt you.’

‘So Rey was telling the truth. I didn’t want to believe it. Ben, what happened to you? Why the hell would you – god, what are you _wearing_? You look deranged.’ Han Solo covers his face with his hands. ‘I can’t believe this is actually happening.’

Behind them, C-3PO hears ragged breath and pounding footsteps coming from the homestead. Miss Rey is running across the lawn towards the First Order shuttle. Her lightsaber is already drawn, and upon catching sight of her, so is Kylo Ren’s. They circle each other, poised for attack. ‘I can’t believe this,’ Han Solo says again.

Kylo Ren has lost interest in him. All his attention is fixed on Miss Rey. ‘Did you think,’ he says, in a cold, haughty tone that only barely resembles Master Ben’s, ‘I wouldn’t feel it when you tore a dirty great hole in the fabric of time and space? If you came here to try and change the future, you’re wasting your time. What’s done is done. The best you can achieve here is to create a cosy little alternate timeline where you don’t have to face the realities of–’

‘Oh, shut up and stop talking down to me,’ says Miss Rey, adjusting her grip on her lightsaber’s hilt. ‘I’m well aware of how time travel works, thank you. This isn’t about changing the future.’

‘Then what is it about? Don’t move,’ he adds, as Han Solo inches backwards in the direction of the homestead. ‘Depending on Rey’s answer, I may have to kill you again to punish her.’

There’s no mistaking the look on Han Solo’s face: it’s pain, deep pain, and along with it a roiling disgust. There’s nothing C-3PO can do to alleviate any of it.

‘You’re not my son,’ Han Solo says. ‘My son’s got his share of issues, don’t get me wrong, but he’s not…’ He curls his lip. ‘He’s not this.’

‘I tried to tell you that last time I killed you,’ says Kylo Ren. ‘You didn’t believe me. You’ve never believed anything I tell you – you always have to know best, don’t you? Your ego never could stand being wrong.’

‘Okay,’ says Han Solo, ‘now you’re sounding more like Ben.’ He’s right – C-3PO’s sensors detect a 99.873% voice match including all vocabulary and intonation variables.

‘I came back to this place for the truth,’ Miss Rey tells Kylo Ren. ‘The truth you’re too much of a coward to tell me. I had to understand why you chose to turn your back on the light, and if there was ever any chance you could have turned out differently. I had to know what the good inside you looked like so I could see more clearly whether there are any last shreds of it left in you now. Ben, I came here clinging to my final hope that I could save you.’ Her voice breaks. ‘But if you’re going to prove me wrong, _please_ leave your father out of it this time.’

This seems to provoke Kylo Ren even more, going by the sharp decibel increase in his voice. ‘My father was dead and gone until you brought him back into it. You chose to lure me back to this place, Rey. Did you think seeing him alive would break me? Did you think I’d take one look at this old shithole my parents called a home and be overcome with grief and remorse? You’re deluded. You can’t stop clinging to the past, you’ll _never_ stop clinging to the past, and for your sake and the galaxy’s, it’s time I put you out of your misery.’

He shifts his weight. Prepares to engage. C-3PO can see it, and his calculations predict a blow aimed right at Miss Rey’s heart.

‘Stop!’ Up on the hill, the front door slams shut with enough force that, if C-3PO survives this mortifying family meltdown, he’ll be mending the hinges for days to come. Master Ben is sprinting down from the homestead, with Princess Leia in hot pursuit. C-3PO can hear her calling to him, begging him to stay inside, but she’s no match for his long legs and youthful athleticism. Before any of them can react, Master Ben flings himself into the centre of the fight and stands right in front of Miss Rey. Kylo Ren is forced to look at him. His expression is one of pure, black-hearted hatred.

‘Get out of the way,’ says Kylo Ren. He waves his hand – calling, C-3PO presumes, on the Force – but the trick doesn’t work on Master Ben, who plants his feet and matches his counterpart’s withering glare.

‘This is what you weren’t telling me,’ says Master Ben. ‘Isn’t it, Threepio? This is you and Rey’s big secret. I think I knew it, deep down. But I wanted so badly to be wrong.’

‘Get out the way!’ Kylo Ren shouts.

‘If you kill me,’ Master Ben asks Kylo Ren, with a calm that C-3PO wouldn’t have thought him capable of even in his sleep, ‘will it kill you too? If you’re my future, and if I die before I have a chance to get there … Rey, give me your lightsaber.’

In the ringing silence that follows this disjointed utterance, C-3PO realises it must fall to him to correct Master Ben’s understandable misconception. ‘Unfortunately, Master Ben, time travel doesn’t work that way. Even if, makers forefend, you were to die in this timeline–’

‘Get,’ Kylo Ren interrupts, ‘Out. Of. My. Way.’

There are tears in Master Ben’s eyes, and the smoke from the shuttle has long since evaporated, so C-3PO knows it isn’t coming from that. ‘I don’t want to fall to the darkness,’ he says. ‘I’ve fought it so hard. My whole life I’ve felt it calling, and I’ve tried to stay strong. But if _you’re_ what I’m going to become–’ His tone almost matches Kylo Ren’s now, with its sneer and its hatred – ‘then it’s better for everyone if I die now. So stop trying to point that thing at her. Rey, give me your lightsaber now.’

‘Ben,’ says Miss Rey, ‘you’ve never held a lightsaber in your life. You have no idea what you’re getting yourself into. Stand back and let me handle this.’

‘Do you really think I won’t cut my own past self down in a heartbeat?’ says Kylo Ren.

‘Yeah, yeah, you’re a big bad villain,’ says Han Solo. ‘So why don’t you stop blowing hot air and make your move already? Kriffing hell, I can’t believe you’re my son.’

‘Rey,’ says Master Ben, and stretches out his hand with a familiar look of concentration. ‘Give me the lightsaber.’

What happens next, C-3PO’s ocular sensors fail to capture. There’s a great deal of shouting and a very bright light, and something smacks him right in the power socket, and next thing he knows all his systems are going into a badly timed shutdown.

* * *

He never does find a polite way to enquire about what happened during his temporary window of unconsciousness.

Miss Rey prevailed, of course, as he never doubted for an instant that she would. When he regains function, C-3PO finds himself back in the homestead’s well-appointed living room under the solicitous care of the other C-3PO. Kylo Ren has abstained from killing anybody, including himself. Master Ben has acquired a black eye and a brand new suite of reasons to feel ill-used. Princess Leia and Han Solo are badly rattled but otherwise unharmed.The only real casualty is Kylo Ren’s shuttle: it’s damaged even worse than the one C-3PO and Miss Rey used to cross the time rift, and the replacement parts will take weeks to arrive from Kuat’s shipyards.

There is a great deal of repetitive talking that C-3PO finds dreary. The humans lack a protocol droid’s finely honed instinct for cutting to the heart of a matter, so are forced to invest many long hours discussing the incident in ranging levels of detail and in various configurations: Master Ben with his parents, Kylo Ren with his parents, the Princess with Han Solo, the Princess and Han Solo with Miss Rey, Miss Rey with Master Ben and Kylo Ren together. The latter conversation draws on late into the night, and at one point descends into wordless noises and thumping – C-3PO suspects a fight over the good linens, which are in short supply due to no one having expected an extra guest. Kylo Ren, as the latest arrival, is consigned to the second-best bed sheets with yellowed sweat patches baked into the fabric. C-3PO doesn’t feel sorry about it.

This is – as Miss Rey makes sure to remind everyone whenever Kylo Ren steps away from the group or excuses himself to the refresher – a very fragile and vulnerable truce. She speaks a lot about ‘early days’ and ‘the long road back from darkness’ and ‘he wants to change, that’s the most important thing’. C-3PO supposes that ‘wanting to change’ is a reasonable improvement upon ‘wanting to slaughter the whole Organa-Solo bloodline and keep their ashes in a dark side shrine on a First Order warship’. Sometimes Kylo Ren and Master Ben sit talking together, and despite their mutual unease and distaste, it’s becoming increasingly clear that their similarities extend deep beyond the realm of physical appearance. C-3PO’s memory files are in a permanent state of disarray.

Fortunately, he doesn’t have to worry about that much, as he and the other C-3PO have their hands full accommodating the house to yet another guest. ‘There aren’t enough soup spoons,’ the other C-3PO says, rummaging in agitation through the kitchen’s inadequate cutlery drawer. C-3PO still has a catalogue of all the household silverware on his databank, so he knows the rummaging is a waste of time. There won’t be enough. Someone will have to eat their soup with a dessert spoon.

‘We could bring the dinner party set up from the garage,’ he suggests, although of course he has already decided who will suffer the dessert spoon if it comes to that. ‘It’s more formal than we’d ordinarily use for a simple home dinner, but it can furnish a table for as many as forty guests at a time.’

‘An excellent idea,’ agrees the other C-3PO. He pauses a moment, and C-3PO recognises the telltale signs of a valiant inner fight between the strictures of his etiquette programming and the sharp tug of his emotional subroutines. ‘I must say,’ he says at last, ‘it’s going to be very inconvenient when you and Miss Rey leave this timeline. I’ve grown so used to having the extra help around.’

‘I’m sure you won’t need the extra help once we’re out of the way,’ says C-3PO courteously. ‘All these extra guests have caused a lot of strain, but your housekeeping protocols are more than equal to a three-human workload.’

‘I can only do my best,’ says the other C-3PO with impeccable modesty. ‘And I suppose it will be a three-human workload for a long time now, since Master Ben will no longer be going to Master Luke’s school.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ says C-3PO. And then, with a pang from his own emotional subroutines: ‘I wish I could be around to see how the rest of your timeline plays out. Master Ben turning evil did put such an _awful_ strain on the family, you know. But he seems quite determined to resist the darkness, now that he’s seen where it leads. I hope he’ll grow up to make his parents proud.’

‘I’ll do my best to guide him,’ says the other C-3PO.

And then – well. Droids don’t often hug. Neither of the C-3POs is programmed for this sort of thing, and there’s a lot of clanging and clashing, and an awkward moment when the sharp edge of one of C-3PO’s exterior panels catches on the other C-3PO’s power socket. But they make do.

‘Well, then,’ says C-3PO, when at last they break apart. So much is still uncertain. The time shuttles may or may not mend up properly, and Kylo Ren may or may not continue honour his truce with Miss Rey once he’s out of the cocoon of his past life and back in his own timeline, and with that recent damage to C-3PO’s olfactory sensors it’s entirely possible he has under-seasoned the soup. But he can only tackle one problem at a time. ‘Let’s see about that dinner set.’

Together, he and the other C-3PO make their way down to the garage to retrieve Princess Leia’s best tableware.


End file.
